which Gothamist called "a timely analysis of the redevelopment of Coney Island that delineates fact from rumor in the future of this American landmark, while documenting the relationships and culture that have influenced it."

Sunday, July 29, 2012

This afternoon the sun came out and the rains held off, and we got the fun of seeing this season's Shakespeare at the Pagoda in Prospect Park, with the talented EBE Ensemble presenting another terrifically entertaining show, a cleverly staged, laugh-filled production of The Comedy of Errors, directed by Elyzabeth Gorman.

We came slightly late -- after all these years, finding the Music Pagoda is still a bit challenging to us -- and didn't get a program, but we know from the EBE Ensemble website that the cast included Whit Leyenberger, Dylan C. Digel, David Jenkins, Thomas Muccioli, Josephine Ganner, KC Wright, Jordan Douglas Smith, Jessica Loudon,
Noam Tomaschoff, Eric Alba, Olivia Hayes, Allyson Boate and Andrews Landsman.

So the only cast member we recognized was the company's artistic director, Eric Alba, whom we'd seen before as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet and Brutus in Julius Caesar. Here he was one of two comic cops in a Sun Belt police officer's uniform playing one of Officers, Jailers, and Headsman.

Gorman's production uses informal contemporary costumes, nothing truly out of place in contemporary Brooklyn, and the more tedious parts of the text are thankfully dispensed with so that the comedy moves very fast and with a lot of laughs.

The two sets of twins -- the Antiphilos of Syracuse and Antiphilos of Ephesus and their slave Dromios -- are dressed almost alike and look pretty similar, but the actors taking the roles managed to imbue each character with a distinctive personality and particular comic tics.